“I see a silver knife in a strong hand. I see scars. On the knuckle of the … ring finger. On the side of the hand. An old injury. He … hurt it … fixing a car. A wrench slipped. Sharp metal. Last year? Yes.”
Dana murmured, “Is that him?”
“It is the angel,” said Corinda slowly, distantly.
“Does he have a tattoo? An eclipse.”
“Yes,” said Corinda.
“He’s a monster.”
“He is a human,” said Corinda. “A person. He is flesh and bone.”
“But—”
“He has power, though. Great power. He projects … He lies by planting … faces … in the minds of people like him. He wears masks … he wears Lucifer’s face as a mask. He is not the devil, though, but he is his voice. He speaks for him. He is evil.”
“That’s him!” cried Dana. “Can you see his face? His real face?”
Corinda’s facial muscles went slack as she slipped deeper inside her vision.
“He hides his face. He is so strong, so clever. He knows how to hide, but he is close, Dana,” she murmured. “So close. He … sees you. No, he has seen you. Spoken to you.”
“What?”
“And you … have seen him. Spoken … to him.”
“When?”
Corinda shook her head and winced as if some titanic battle raged inside her mind. “You know his name … I think. Yes. You know his name. He will kill again,” whispered Corinda. “Soon. He must. He wants to. He has already selected his next victim. Oh God! Oh God … no!”
“What is it?” cried Dana, jumping to her feet.
Corinda’s eyes snapped open. “It’s you, Dana. The killer is coming for you.”
Dana backed away, bumping into the small cabinet and banging it against the wall of the niche. “No. Who is he? Why’s he doing this? Why’s he after me?”
The look in Corinda’s eyes was strange, complex. There was fear there, and wonder, and doubt. She passed her hands in front of her face, as if that could forcibly disconnect her mind from the vision. Then she sagged back, shaking her head, spent and trembling.
“He … he’s strong,” she gasped. “Stronger than I thought.”
“What’s his name?” begged Dana. “You have to tell me.”
But Corinda kept shaking her head. “He would not let me that far in. All I know for certain is that he has those scars on his hand and he always has the knife with him.” She looked at Dana. “If he’s coming after you, then you have to find him first. You have to discover who among the people you know matches that description. You have to find him first.”
CHAPTER 51
Craiger, Maryland
7:19 P.M.
Dana left Beyond Beyond badly shaken.
She had been unable to get anything further out of Corinda, and besides, the psychic looked like she was on the verge of collapse. Sunlight was already gone, and only Angelo and one of the other staff members were around, but now wasn’t the time to discuss this sort of thing with either of them. The one pay phone at the store was being used, so she left and crossed to the phone booth outside the diner on the corner. As she closed the door, the dome light flicked on. She fished coins from her pocket and called home, trying to find Melissa.
It was Dad who answered. “Starbuck?” he said. “Where are you?”
No way she wanted to tell her father about anything that was going on. Dad was very much by-the-book and would have laughed at anything involving psychic phenomena. Laughed and maybe ordered her to come right home.
“I, um, have jujutsu tonight,” she said quickly, and then realized it wasn’t actually a lie. All of her classes—jujutsu and yoga—were listed on the wall calendar in the kitchen. Sometimes she went to the five thirty class and sometimes the seven thirty session.
“It’s smarter to go to the earlier class,” her father said.
“I know, but since we had a half day I decided to go to the library. I wanted to get ahead of the English essays I have to write.”
“Well, that’s okay, then.” It had been the right kind of argument to use on her dad.
“Is Melissa there?” asked Dana. “I wanted to, um, ask her about some homework.”
That was a lie, and Dad jumped right on it. “You want Melissa to help with homework?”
Dana had to think fast. “A poetry assignment in English.”
“Oh,” said Dad. Poetry, music, and art were the only subjects where Melissa stood on firmer ground than Dana. She was like Mom in that. Artsy rather than what Dad called “practical” in subjects like math, history, science, and gym.
“Your sister,” said Dad, “is at a friend’s house. Eileen Minder-something.”
“Minderjahn. Melissa is over at Eileen’s house?”
“So she says. And that’s where she’d better be.”
Despite everything, Dana had to smile. There was about one chance in ten trillion Melissa was at the Minderjahns to hang out with Eileen. The chances were a whole lot higher that Eileen wasn’t even home and that Dave was. Dana did not say as much to her father.
“Okay. I’ll call her over there.”
“If you do,” said Dad, “remind her that both of you are supposed to be home at nine thirty, and that does not mean nine thirty-one. Are we clear?”
“Aye, aye, Captain Ahab.”
There was a pause, then in a softer and gentler voice, Dad said, “You be careful out there.”
“Always,” she said.
It was the biggest lie she’d ever told her father.
“I love you, Starbuck,” he said, surprising her. Dad rarely said anything like that. Before she could reply, the line went dead.
She leaned against the glass wall of the phone booth, feeling oddly lost, as if she had somehow been abandoned by everyone. That wasn’t true, of course, but the feeling was so powerful and persistent that Dana tested the folding door to make sure it was all the way closed. Better to be locked in a glass booth than be out there, exposed, vulnerable.
That, too, was an irrational thought. She was a target in a fishbowl, and she realized that safety was incredibly subjective. It was what people made of it in the moment. That was not a comforting realization. She looked at the darkened street, at the passing cars and the occasional pedestrians, seeing no one she recognized. Not at first. Then she saw Angelo come out of the alley that ran alongside Beyond Beyond. He wore a dark long-sleeved hooded sweatshirt that made him blend almost completely in with the shadows behind him. He looked up and down the street, obviously looking for something or someone. Dana pulled the handle of the folding door, opening it inward until the edge of the metal door released the button that triggered the light. The booth went dark a split second before Angelo looked across the street. His gaze swept toward the phone booth, seemed to pause for a moment, and then moved on. Then he pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt, jammed his hands into his pocket, and hurried across, slanting away from where Dana stood trembling.
She lingered there in the dark, watching his figure vanish into the night.
Why did I hide from him?
Why am I afraid of him?
The questions burned in her mind, but she did not try to answer them. Not out here, alone in the dark, confused and still off balance from whatever had happened in Sunlight’s Chrysalis Room. Not after everything Corinda had told her.
She put another dime in the slot and dialed a number. It rang five times before Ethan answered.
“I need to see you,” she said, her voice urgent and breathless.
“Whoa, wait, are you okay? Is something wrong?”
“Everything’s wrong,” said Dana, but then she took a breath. “Look, can I come over? I need to talk about some things with someone who understands.”
“Understands what?”
It was a good question, and it took Dana a few seconds to figure out how to answer it. “The case,” she said at last. “I have more information, but I don’t know if it’s real or not. Actually, I don’t know if any
thing’s real anymore. My head is so messed up right now.”
“Messed up how?” asked Ethan.
“I’ll tell you when I see you. I’ll tell you everything. Can I come over?”
“When?”
“Now.”
Ethan paused and hushed his voice. “I think Uncle Frank brought the file home for Todd Harris. I saw him putting the big case folder in his desk, and it looked thicker. But the thing is, my uncle’s still here. He was supposed to work another double today but he said he wasn’t feeling too good and called in sick. But after he took a nap, he said he was doing better and was going to go in after all. He said it was probably just too much spicy food at the diner last night. But he won’t be leaving for an hour. I’m cooking dinner first. He wanted oatmeal to calm his stomach. Can you come over after? Like around eight?”
Dana thought about it. She felt like going home and hiding under the covers in her room, but she was afraid of what her parents would say, especially if her pupils were still dilated from whatever it was that had happened with Sunlight. Last thing she needed was to have her folks think she’d been getting high. As if. But with everyone in Craiger talking about dumb kids getting stoned and then getting killed, she’d never be able to convince her parents that it was the aftereffect of meditation and astral projection. Yeah, that wasn’t something she could sell. She didn’t even know if she believed it herself.
However, if she didn’t go home, that left a lot of time. She glanced along Main Street in the direction of the dojo.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be over after my class, but I have a curfew, so I won’t be able to stay long.”
“Good,” said Ethan, sounding relieved. “And Dana…?”
“Yes?”
“Be careful, okay?” He paused, then added, “I just found you. Don’t want to lose you already.”
Dana took too long trying to decide how to answer. Ethan hung up.
She stood in the darkened booth and stared at the phone.
And smiled.
CHAPTER 52
Kakusareta Taiyou Dojo
7:35 P.M.
Dana was late for class but jumped right into the calisthenics. The orderliness of push-ups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks helped calm her jangled brain. And it gave her something else to blame for rapid heartbeat and sweats. Then they began the drills. The students stood in lines, everyone wearing crisp white gis and colored belts; Sensei Miyu Sato and her assistant, Saturo, wearing starched black hakama, the traditional culottes of the samurai. As Saturo counted in Japanese, the students moved together, practicing footwork and postures, evasions and angles of attack, while Sensei Miyu paced up and down and studied them with a critical eye.
Then everyone was paired off for uchikomi, a drill for practicing attacking skills against a passive opponent. There was an uneven number of students in the dojo that night, so Dana found—to her dismay—that she was paired with Saturo. The exercise always began very slowly to allow students to see that every technical detail was correct. They started with tsukuri, the preparation for a throw, and repeated this twenty times. Then on the last run, the throw was executed with more speed and as much precision as possible.
There were a lot of components to a good throw, including interception of the opponent’s attack; achieving the correct and best angle; disrupting balance; establishing a fulcrum with a foot, leg, hip, or shoulder; generating power through speed and torsion; and then the actual throw, followed by a pin, pressure point, or finishing strike. The goal, according to the sensei, was to do every single technique at least ten thousand times to truly master them. As there were hundreds of techniques in jujutsu, Dana did not expect to become a master anytime soon.
However, the orderly, mechanical, and practical approach to these exercises steadied her. Nothing was mystical in jujutsu. It was all physics and physiology, cause and effect, logic and technique. She was far from the best student in the class, but she learned very quickly, and she loved deconstructing each move to understand how they worked. Leverage points, angles of mass displacement, velocity, and balance. It was machinelike in the best of ways, and as the class wore on, it pulled her back from the strange and formless places her mind had gone.
When they had completed these drills, Sensei Miyu ordered everyone to sit cross-legged around the edges of the large mat-covered area in the center of the room.
“I know this is not anyone’s favorite drill,” said the sensei, “but randori is important to the development of reliable self-defense.”
A few of the students groaned, and Dana had to suppress her own trepidation. Randori was freestyle practice, where one person acted as attacker and the other had to defend, but without knowing which attack was coming. Dana didn’t mind playing the role of uke, the attacker, even though it meant getting kicked, thrown, locked, or pinned. It was all controlled, though. What she didn’t like was being off her game when she was tori, the defender, because she was supposed to be the one kicking, throwing, locking, and pinning. She did pretty well against students of her own skill level, but things never worked out when she was paired with Saturo. She had never once successfully defended against his lightning-fast attacks. And Saturo was uncompromising. He never cut anyone a break. His philosophy was simply, “If you don’t want to get knocked down, be a better fighter.”
Easy to say, but since he was a black belt, Saturo was the demon they all feared.
“Dana, Saturo,” said Sensei Miyu, “you may lead us off.”
Saturo smiled. Dana’s heart sank.
They walked to the center of the mat and bowed to each other. Dana, being the junior of the two, was first uke, and she came in with a series of strikes, attempted grabs, and kicks. Each time Saturo seemed to turn into a blur, and then she was flying through the air and thudding to the mat. Over and over and over again.
She was hardly sure which techniques he used on her. All she saw was his smiling face, the winces on the faces of the other students, and then the mat coming up to greet her at thirty miles an hour.
“Mate!” called Sensei Miyu. Stop. “Change.”
Dana climbed to her feet, bowed to the sensei, bowed again to Saturo, and settled into a receptive combat stance, feet wide, knees bent, weight shifted onto the balls of her feet, her hands open and raised, palms turned slightly outward. She was tori now and it was her job to be in control of the encounter and defeat any attack. Saturo, playing the role of uke, began circling, much as he had done when they did the knife drill. He loved to circle, and it worked to confuse his opponents and make it difficult to ever predict the exact moment or angle of his attack. When he moved in at her, he was even faster, if that was possible, snapping a kick to within a half inch of her knee or heart or nose, or slashing an open-handed blow toward her with the speed of a whip.
He attacked five times and scored five times.
A sixth.
A seventh.
Dana was starting to panic. Her head was still not right from her mind trip, and she was a little nauseated, as if this fight was happening on the deck of a ship out in choppy waters. She staggered backward a few times, tripped and fell on her butt once, and nearly walked into a back-fist punch. Instead of easing up on her, Saturo seemed to go faster, not trying to hurt her but definitely pushing her out onto the edge of her ability, trying to show her how vulnerable she was. He did not let her stop, never gave her a chance to catch her breath, cut her no breaks at all. She wanted to run, to hide, to cry.
And then something happened.
Suddenly the whole world seemed to shift, to skew around in the wrong direction. Instead of seeing Saturo rushing at her with a powerful roundhouse kick, she saw herself standing in the path of the kick. It was like she stepped into Saturo’s mind for a moment and saw what he saw, even thought what he thought.
Scare the red clean off that dumb girl’s hair.
That was the thought in Saturo’s mind as he launched the kick, but somehow the kick was wrong. It abruptly slowed down so that
it moved through the air as sluggishly as if he were kicking while standing chin-deep in water. It still moved, and Dana knew that it was all some kind of bizarre perceptual shift, and yet she was inside the bubble of slowed time.
Then she was back in her own body and the kick was coming toward her. Still slowly, still moving as if time belonged to her and she had it to spare. Anger surged up in her chest and then flashed out through her arms and legs, burning like jet engines. She launched herself forward, stepping inside the arc of that kick, closing to a distance that nullified the power of the attack; and at the same time her hands moved, striking him in the thigh, in the stomach, in the face. She saw blood fly like small rubies, she saw his eyes go wide with shock and pain. Far away there was a sound, the distorted cry of command and warning as Sensei Miyu ordered her to stop.
And then, with the abruptness of an explosion, real time caught up with her. Bang. All at once.
Saturo fell backward, his hands clamped over his nose, a cry torn from his throat as he fell hard and fell badly. Sensei Miyu grabbed Dana’s shoulder and hauled her backward, spinning her, shoving her away from the fallen Saturo. Yelling at her. Furious. Scared, too.
Dana staggered a few feet away and barely caught herself at the edge of the mat. She turned to see Sensei kneeling over Saturo, speaking to him with forced calm, pulling his hands away so she could examine the damage.
Even from fifteen feet away it was clear to Dana, and to everyone else, that Saturo’s nose was badly broken. There was blood everywhere, and he had tears in his eyes.
Dana said, “Oh God, I’m sorry.”
She took a step forward, but Sensei hissed at her. “Sit down.”
Everyone was looking at her. Shocked eyes, open mouths. Doubt and worry and even some contempt.
“I’m sorry,” Dana said again. She bowed to Saturo, repeating her apology over and over again.
Finally, Saturo struggled to sit up. Blood streamed down his chin and onto his chest, staining his white gi with dark red. He looked at her with eyes that were filled with pain.
But he said, “Okay.”